


GOTCHA!

by yoonbot (iverins)



Category: fromis_9 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Awkward Exes, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Post-Break Up, Roh Jisun-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 10:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/pseuds/yoonbot
Summary: The good thing about having a jam-packed schedule is that Jisun’s so busy that she just doesn’t have time to think about it. ‘It’ being ‘the mistake.’ ‘The mistake’ being ‘sticking her tongue down Minho’s throat again.’ ‘Sticking her tongue down Minho’s throat again’ being, well. Exactly that.Or: Jisun dates around, but that's not the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel's back. Jisun gets caught on fansite camera having an argument with one of her exes, who just happens to be her new Inkigayo co-host. This is.





	GOTCHA!

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [kpopolymfics2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/kpopolymfics2019) collection. 



> This fic was written for K-Pop Olymfics 2019 as part of Team Canon/AR/Future 1. Olymfics is a challenge in which participants write fics based on prompt sets and compete against other teams of writers, organized by genre. Competition winners are chosen by the readers, so please rate this fic using [this survey](https://forms.gle/uBqToUDtkmoiLGZKA)!
> 
>  **Prompt:**  
>  **Red Velvet – "Peekaboo"**  
> [lyrics](https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2017/11/red-velvet-peek-boo-pikabu) **|** [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uJf2IT2Zh8) **|** [supplementary](https://66.media.tumblr.com/c38fa369e17c31dde823661c558f41d3/tumblr_pest5fp9fq1riqhfk_500.jpg) \- [prompts](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ca/a2/f8/caa2f8a6e9e04119a253292661fc3d25.jpg)
> 
> \-----
> 
> "Jisun's nickname from debut was 'precious fairy.' And she has always had that image but she's the most different from that!"
> 
> \- Saerom, NCT Night Night 181025
> 
>    
> (and then this entire fic was born.) vaguely set in 2020. **THIS IS PURELY FICTIONAL.**  
> 
> 
> \-----

Ask Jisun in a couple years about the moment when she knew she'd made it as an idol and she'll tell you with a pretty, practiced smile tugging on her perfectly-lined lips that it was when she held her first music show trophy in her hands.

In all actuality though, this moment comes down to Jisun squinting at her phone screen first thing in the morning two months before that, trying to decipher her newest notification. Which is courtesy of Instagram user id54399: _yew row two-friend batman!!_ Jisun squints a little harder. Oh, it's _you're a two-faced bitch!!,_ with an impressive 422 likes. _Huh._ When she scrolls up, her latest painstakingly-angled selfie smiles back at her, blissfully unaware of the hate comments below. And well, to be fair, Jisun hadn't been crazy about that particular post either – not to a hate-level extent, but who was Jisun to speak for the public anyway?

 _Is this you???_ is the first of around fifty messages from Jiwon on KaKaoTalk, followed by a thirty-three second video shot from what looks like outside the SBS Building. _Ppl r sharing it everywhere._ And Jisun's about to type _no_ when the clip automatically plays, showing two figures, grainy from the extreme zoom – one bleach blond and the other with long dark hair – facing each other, both with their arms crossed against their chests. "You know what? _Whatever!_ " is the only audio caught before the video blacks out, only to replay again. And again, and again, and again, and somewhere in between the fifth and sixth loop, Jisun finally registers _Hmm, that sounds a little like me,_ and _that looks like the outfit I wore last week,_ and –

 _Oh._ Now she’s fully awake. Well, shit.

 

 

 

 

Here are two truths and one lie:

1) On the cusp of fromis_9's 1000th day anniversary, a Pann post titled _IDOLS CAUGHT ARGUING OUTSIDE SBS???_ goes viral, blurry fancam that some other fan edited for a clearer audio attached. _Posted under a fan account for Stray Kids' Lee Know,_ says the original text, _but who's the girl? ㅋㅋ_ And after another forty-eight hours, fromis_9's celebratory V LIVE to their smallest anniversary viewership to date, and an entire comment section filled with various girl group idol names, comes the most upvoted reply: _It's fromis_9's Roh Jisun. Heol, my cousin who's a huge idol fan knew it was her right away ㅎㅎ,_ with 431 responses along the lines of _wow, does she think she's relevant, picking on another idol??_ and _look at how uncomfortable Lee Know oppa looks ㅠㅠ this b****._

Objectively speaking, things shouldn't have blown up the way they did. Or, at least according to the four hour meeting they're subjected to by upper management after everything: "Things could also be much worse." As in, instead of their most recent music video doubling its view count on YouTube months after promotions ended, and their old title tracks climbing back up the charts, and the hundreds of hate comments popping up on Jisun's personal Instagram, their careers should've effectively been over. Other girl groups have been burned at the stake for less.

Except – and if the PR team found out, they’d probably keel over and die right there – that's not even half of it. "Look, the next time you wanna make out with someone," Jiwon hisses to her behind their manager's back once they're finally heading back to the dorm. "Can you please stop and think: hey, is this really worth it? Can't I just get the same satisfaction from kissing Jiwon instead?"

Jisun stops walking to give her her best deadpan stare. She needs to stop telling Jiwon things. Jiwon just puckers her lips like a fish and makes a kissy face back at her. Good thing their manager only seems to notice their existence again when she turns around to groan, "Can you guys _please_ take this more seriously?" at Jisun poking a shrieking Jiwon's sides in retaliation.

2) Jisun breaks up with her first boyfriend when she goes home for _Seollal._ It's a quiet, one-sided kind of thing where they walk to the nearby park in the dark of night, and Jisun's debating whether or not to reach for his hand through the cold the entire time. And just when she makes contact with his fingertips, he turns to her with his mouth pressed into a solemn line and says simply, "I think we should stop seeing each other."

"Oh." The puff of breath that escapes her lips distorts his face. Suddenly Jisun can't remember why they started dating in the first place. "Okay."

He walks her home, like a good senior from her high school days – or at least before she quit to become an idol – would, and that's when Jisun notices how much his hair has grown out from that uneven buzz cut he'd had straight out from the military back when they'd met up with a group of friends during _Chuseok,_ around when they'd started going out. She'd been so enamored with it for some reason, after being constantly surrounded by picture perfect men. And it wasn't like Jisun thought they'd amount to something when their late night meetings would usually consist of him complaining about his new fancy advertising job downtown and her trying to get him to shut up and kiss her, but she cries on and off about it for the rest of the week before moving on.

And then on her first day back at the dorm, the company removes their cell phone ban.

Looks, when you're a chess piece in the big board of the entertainment industry, get you far. "You could just stand there," Herin had sobbed into her cardigan when Jisun tried to comfort her after her elimination during Idol School, "and I could hear people fall in love with you." She thought about that when she stood on that raised platform by herself in first place at the end of it all, and after hugging and crying with the rest of the girls backstage, Jisun lay in her bed at home for the first time in months and wondered if everything came down to what people thought about her face on their TV screens, and how she was just lucky enough that they'd liked what they saw.

And looks, when you're around other young twenty-somethings whose careers depend on earning love from strangers, who haven't learned how to separate those careers from their personal lives yet, get you phone numbers, especially when their schedules happen to keep coinciding with your own.

Chaeyoung's drinking a glass of water in the kitchen the first time Jisun comes back from sneaking out of the dorm. "Couldn't sleep," she tries to lie, skirting around the creaky spot in the floorboards. "So I went to the gym."

Chaeyoung pointedly glances at her skinny jeans and the puffy scarf around her neck. "Unnie, please," she starts, rolling her eyes. Jisun opens her mouth to protest. "Your lip tint is smudged _all over_ your face."

Jisun shields her mouth with her hands. “Is not,” she insists.

“Sure, sure,” Chaeyoung just laughs before downing the rest of her water. “Tell that to your _boyfriend,_ ” she pulls a face, “and then get back to me.”

And okay, several things: it's never really dating compared to just satisfying a physical need of intimacy that Jisun can't normally. And it's never really more than making out in secluded spots really late at night, or in the back of the last showing at a movie theater outside the crowded parts of Seoul, or, if she’s feeling risky or _that_ pent-up, in a locked dressing room at a music show – and Jisun’s not going to name names, but that’s the one ill-timed moment one of her flings asks, “Hey, what if we went out? Like, for real?” to which she pulls away from mouthing at his neck and answers, “Shit, I have to be on standby,” when there’s a good five performances before they’ll need her backstage and they both know that.

Luckily, he backpedals so fast that it's almost comical except Jisun’s internally freaking out. _Sorry, I'm busy,_ she sends back the next few times he asks to meet up, and then he finally gets the message and leaves her alone. They both go out of their way to avoid eye contact if they ever run into each other at broadcasts after that.

Also: in her defense, Jisun’s not even the one to end things when it comes to her and Minho. It’d all started when they’d both guested on this cooking program that streamed online, and it took three episodes and one frantic twenty minute incident of him washing out his contact lense after she accidentally squirted chili oil into it before he asked if she’d like to exchange numbers over the hum of the basement vending machines. And then he bit his lip. And well, who was Jisun to say no to _that?_

The thing is, it’s supposed to end amicably. Jisun’s been good at maintaining professionalism even when she’s stuck her tongue down someone else’s throat, and she’s gotten way better at pretending that that hasn’t happened when she passes one of her past flings in the hallway at a music program. But then two years after debut, Stray Kids is one of JYP’s new golden groups winning awards at end-of-the-year shows left and right, and Jisun has to try really hard to forget that Minho cuts her off like:

“We’re going overseas tomorrow.”

Jisun turns to look at him from reapplying her lipstick in her phone’s selfie camera, the flash making her see a large green spot in the place of his face. “Okay,” she starts slowly, frowning in thought. She’s not quite sure where he’s going with this. “See you when you get back?”

Minho wrings his hands. “No.” He turns to her briefly before looking away again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

And at this point, Jisun’s gone through this similar scenario enough times to know that it’s her cue to say _alright._ “Oh,” comes out instead. She turns his words over and over again in her mind for a good minute. “I don’t think this was ever a good idea,” she finally settles on.

“Yeah,” he laughs humorlessly, pointedly not looking at her. “It wasn’t.” And by the time Jisun wants to ask what he means by _that,_ she’s lying in her bed with the covers pulled up to her nose, and his number's already deleted from her phone in the heat of the moment.

So yes, Jisun recognizes that things could’ve gone better. Things as in: going in for her first meeting as a new Inkigayo host, spending hours sitting across from the PD and other staff reviewing the script with her not-technically-but-kind-of ex who, by some horrible twist of the universe, just _has to be_ her new co-worker, and getting into a stupid argument over coordinating their schedules to rehearse their opening stage after Minho says, still pointedly not looking at her, that “our managers will take care of it.” And that argument happens right outside the parking structure, where some fan happens to get a bad quality fancam of it on their phone and – well. You know how that one goes.

3) You heard it here first: Stray Kids’ Lee Know is an _awful_ kisser. And yeah, unfortunately for Jisun, this one’s the lie.

 

 

 

 

If caught in a scandal, Jisun remembers the staff telling them during those few, concentrated months of idol training that they got before debut, let PR handle it. And PR handles it like this:

Come Sunday morning, Jisun’s back at Inkigayo for rehearsal, scrolling through the newest comments on her Instagram while getting her makeup touched up. _Why is your company lying?,_ reads the most liked comment, _we all know it’s you ㅋㅋ._ She stares at that one for a good few minutes, trying to make sense of how she feels about it. The coordi unnie looks at her with pity before slathering more concealer over her dark circles.

Also come Sunday morning, fromis_9’s last promotional single is still steadily climbing the charts, and if the public generally hates Jisun now, they make up for it by loving Gyuri twice as much after remembering how much they liked her back when she was on Produce48 two years ago. “‘Puppy eyes, you should’ve been in IZ*ONE,’” Jisun reads from a trending Pann post after they'd turned the lights off in their room. “Crying face. ‘How’d you get stuck in a group with such a bitch instead?’”

“ _Stop,_ ” Gyuri says, a smile in her voice, kicking Jisun’s mattress from her bottom bunk. “You’re making yourself miserable.”

Jisun laughs, locking her phone and resting it against her chin. “Maybe I deserve to be miserable.” And even though she doesn’t feel like crying when Gyuri starts softly, _hey, Jisun-ah,_ she doesn’t reply to that either.

And it's not like there aren't people still supporting her. There’s an entire response post titled _[enter-talk] SBS FANCAM IDOL IS **NOT** ROH JISUN_ with a whole list of reasons why the girl in the video can’t be her, a small trending hashtag on Twitter of support, and her members, whose general consensus from their attempts to comfort her about the current state of her reputation boils down to “you have the right to date but you just probably should’ve known better than arguing with your ex outside the broadcasting station. We don’t really blame you though, sounds like he acted like total dick.”

But there’s also the fact that Jisun has to stare down the biggest mistake of her career every Sunday until her MC contract is up and, even better, rehearse the moves to the newest Bruno Mars collab with him for their opening stage. _I wish they’d made you MC instead,_ Jisun texts Jiwon from the bathroom during a break in between dry runs she and Minho spend trying to avoid each other’s gazes, which is mildly hilarious considering Jisun’s sat in his lap and had no problem sticking her tongue into his mouth before, and that had to be less than six months ago. She’s in the midst of coming up with a punchline for the irony of it all when Jiwon replies: _and have me get in the middle of your messy break-up??? NO THNX!_ and then Jisun remembers as she’s examining her reflection in the mirror that no one else actually finds her jokes funny.

But despite what Jiwon thinks, it’s honestly not all that bad. The work and Jisun's humor, for that matter.

“Last rehearsal!” someone backstage shouts as they take their respective places on the set. Jisun pulls at her skirt, stealing a glance at Minho before the lights dim and like this – with his hair pushed back and a light shade of blond – he looks so different from when they were seeing each other that it’s like she never even knew him, like JYP didn’t release a well-worded statement saying some variation of _Lee Know was having a conversation with a friend that was not supposed to be public, and we hope that fans will be respect his privacy in the future_ with the majority of his fans jumping in quickly to chorus their agreement, like the both of them don’t make an incredibly awkward bout of eye contact through their spotlights right before the music blares on and it throws Jisun a whole count off.

Or, well: it’s not _supposed to be_ all that bad, and then the part of their routine where Minho’s meant to smile and help her down the stairs of the platform she’s standing on happens. Long story short, he flinches away like her hand’s burned him and Jisun trips over her heels and goes sprawling instead.

“Are you okay?” he asks her, his mic pack still on, echoing the words across the stage. And Jisun could say a lot of things to that. Wants to, like: _No, I’m not,_ except some part of herself doesn’t want to admit how annoyed she is over how after basically bending over backwards to keep a lengthy distance between them, he’s suddenly right next to her, feigning concerned. Or, _I’m fine, thanks,_ take the hand he’s holding out to help her up and suppress that irritation within herself, grit her teeth, and make it through rehearsal and filming like a true professional. Or even, _Yeah, just living the dream,_ which is what’s technically happening, because once your group has lost momentum three years after debut, it’s a miracle if you can get it back – even at the expense of some hate comments from people who have too much time to waste on the internet – and that’s all thanks to him, right?

Except in the moment, Minho's face close to hers from where he’s crouching, that change in hairstyle and carefully tight-lined eyes aside, Jisun’s sleep-deprived mind goes back to the first time he brought his face towards hers like this before she closed her eyes and gently pressed their mouths together in a hormone-starved attempt at intimacy.

That’s – Jisun realizes as she’s ushered backstage to disinfect her scraped knees and change into a pair of high-waisted jeans which are, _great,_ going to make her thighs look huge on TV – where it all truly takes a turn for the fingernail-pulling-ly awful.

 

 

 

 

"So," is how Hayoung puts it, pursing her lips in thought after Jisun's done, "you think your ex is hot?"

Jisun groans just as their last promotional single, on loop, begins to blare over the practice room speakers again. "Oh my _god,_ unnie." It's managed to climb its way into the top ten on the charts in the past week, and even Jisun's brother – who barely pays any attention to idols – texts her _your song is everywhere, guess i can never escape from my sister ㅋㅋ_ with a video of him passing five different stores in Hongdae, all playing it at the same time. "Why don't you say it a little louder, so our dance teacher knows too?"

Hayoung pushes her shoulder, laughing as Jisun gives into it, splats onto the floor, and doesn’t get up. After months of unrigorous dance training, her stamina’s dwindled into the nonexistent, and practicing for the same music shows that had cut their performances short as soon as their comeback week was over – that are giving them a whole special stage now that their song’s shot up to fame – already has Jisun’s muscles aching. “I’m just _saying,_ ” Hayoung points out through her giggles. “And I mean, what’s wrong with that? You guys dated for a reason, right?”

She shrugs. “I guess.” But actually, it’s more like this: after that four hour meeting with upper management once the scandal broke, Jisun really didn’t have the heart to look into seven pairs of bleary eyes and admit on top of all _that_ injury that she’d basically been fucking around, and that she’d done this same thing with five other guys, and that all their careers could’ve crashed and burned just because Jisun couldn’t figuratively keep it in her pants. Sorry.

“I can’t believe you _lied,_ ” Jiwon told her later when she found Jisun watching late night television on mute instead of sleeping. She paused after staring at her for a bit. “Never mind, actually I can.”

Jisun scowled before flipping the channel. “But what’re you gonna do if they ask you about it?” Jiwon continued once she settled on an old re-run of a cartoon she used to watch as a kid. “Like, do you even know his favorite color?” Jisun rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Wait, did you guys ever actually _talk?_ ”

“I mean,” Hayoung starts again once her laughter’s petered out, interrupting Jisun’s thoughts. “That’s not really the problem, you know? It’s more like, now that you’re on the same program…” She stops, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one's within earshot before leaning toward Jisun conspiratorially and lowering her voice behind a cupped hand. “ _Don’t shit where you eat._ ”

Seoyeon, who they both thought had fallen asleep from where she’d starfished on the floor near them, starts cracking up at that. “Oh my god,” Jisun repeats, pulling her hood over her head. And then the timer signaling the end of their fifteen-minute break goes off, and Jisun muddles through the rest of practice slightly mortified.

Retrospectively speaking, Jisun wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place if after IZ*ONE disbanded, Wonyoung still kept her Inkigayo MC position, or if, after a good year of Nakyung becoming the true center of the group, their company didn’t suddenly remember that Jisun had come out on top back in their Idol School days and let her have the new hosting gig instead. “It should’ve been you,” she frowns to Chaeyoung the night after they get their new schedules, and Jisun’s column is the only one full.

Chaeyoung just crushes her into a hug. “No, no, you’ll be great, unnie!” she promises, even though it looks like she’s going to tear up. When she brings her sleeve down from wiping at her eyes, Jisun can barely tell that she’d been upset at all. These days, Chaeyoung helps her run lines and she’s so good at it that even in her old sweats and reading off the paper, Jisun can imagine her standing next to Minho, delivering the lines that are supposed to be hers instead.

And well, rewind a little further and Jisun really could’ve copped out of this entire fiasco if she hadn’t decided to sit in the back of that empty-apart-from-them movie theater and make out with Minho in the first place, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?

“Do you ever check your Instagram?”

Jisun looks up from her cue cards. Minho, from where he’s sitting on the waiting room bench next to her, _next to her_ being _a good few feet away,_ is crouched forward, elbows on his knees, like he’s been the whole time they’ve been running through the new script changes in the waiting room. She frowns, looking back down and trying to find where he’s reading from. “Lee Know-ssi, the weather’s getting cold these days, isn’t it?”

“No,” he says. When Jisun looks up again, he’s blinking back at her, the make-up on the corner of his right eye a little smudged, and the rest of the staff and stylists that usually crowd the room are noticeably gone. “I’m asking _you._ ”

Jisun sighs and puts down her cards. “Asking me what?” she challenges, even though she heard him correctly the first time. But it's not like this is the first time he’s done this – try talking to her as if nothing happened, as if last week, with a camera pointed toward her face as they monitored their pre-recording for “backstage content,” a staff member asked, “What do you think of Lee Know-ssi’s performance?”

“Very cool,” Jisun grinned into the lens as if it were her best friend, giving a thumbs up. “As expected of a Stray Kids member.”

“What about you, Lee Know-ssi?” the cameraman turned to Minho, still examining the monitor, next. “Any words on Jisun-ssi?” As if on cue, her airbrushed face showed up on the screen he was watching and winked in time with the snare.

“Jisun-ssi,” he started, flitting his gaze to meet hers for a brief moment before looking back into the camera with a handsome smile, “looks like she knows exactly what she’s doing up there.” And what the fuck did _that_ mean –

“Sorry,” one of the staff interrupted before he could say anything more. “The camera stopped rolling. Can you repeat that again?”

Minho laughed, nodding. And then after they cued him back on, he smiled and said something completely different.

The Minho of now leans back, absentmindedly readjusting the collar of his shirt. “I’m asking you,” he starts over slowly. With the long coat off, the plain button-down and jeans he has on looks eerily similar to one of those outfits he used to wear when they’d meet up after hours to do some unsavory things. And then Jisun remembers her goddamn problem all over again. “If you check your Instagram?”

“Why?” After days of waking up to new hate comments, she finally had the sense to mute her comment notifications because, “If you put it on private,” their manager relayed to her from some head honcho in PR, “then it looks like you’re guilty.” And there are moments when Jisun has nothing better to do than spend hours checking how people are bad-mouthing her now, but recently, with their overnight success, she hasn’t _really_ had the time.

He tilts his head in an exaggeration of a question. “No reason. I just – ” A staff member walks by the open door across the room, causing him to pause. “Maybe you should look at it,” he shrugs, nonchalant.

Jisun narrows her eyes, as if it’ll help her make sense of him. For hours at a time it’s like he doesn’t even want to acknowledge she exists, and then it’s him breaking things off with her and telling her she’s been little more than a bad idea, and then he’s speaking casually with her like right now, like they can walk out of this entire controversy as friends, which is –

“I don’t _get_ you,” she blurts out before thinking, which is exactly how she fucked things up a few weeks ago. He flinches from it, looking startled. “Do you want us to be friends or something? Because – ”

He opens his mouth just as the staff floods back into the room. And instead of replying, they both scramble to pick up their cue cards and pretend as if they’ve been reviewing the script the whole time, like the hardworking and embroiled-in-scandal-but-acting-as-if-they’re-not idols they are, just in case the camera’s rolling. And for once, Jisun actually prefers it that way.

 

 

 

 

Successful or not, there are three tells to becoming an idol: 1) learning to smile by instinct, 2) fixing some physical attribute that there’s nothing wrong with until someone online points it out, and 3) sleep-deprivation, either from being too busy to get much of it or, the complete opposite: constantly worrying about the state of your run-down career instead. And it’s because of the former that Jisun forgets that entire conversation she had with Minho until:

“Have you seen this?” Gyuri says, holding her phone in front of Jisun’s face from where she’s made herself comfortable on their floor. It’s not worth the effort of climbing up to her bunk when Saerom’s just going to nag her to shower once the bathroom’s free, anyway. “Nakyung sent it to Jiwon, and Jiwon sent it to Hayoung, and Hayoung just sent it to me.”

Jisun catches Gyuri’s phone before it hits her forehead, yawning as she puts in the pattern to unlock it. A tweet glares back at her, saying: _Heol, the mystery’s solved. Stray Kid’s Lee Know said in his recent V LIVE that he and fromis_9’s Roh Jisun are good friends. Maybe that’s why they were talking so loud outside SBS? ㅋㅋㅋ Even though her company denied it was her ㅋㅋㅋ Anyway, same-age friends, it’s cute, right?_ with the respective thirty second video clip of him talking about her beneath it. When she scrolls further, there’s another tweet under that one with four screenshots of comments from user _iknowleeknow_ on her Instagram posts, all with varying types and amounts of cat emojis. And it’s because of that goddamn sleep-deprivation again that Jisun has to squint at it for a good five minutes before she realizes, _oh._

“Oh, Jisun unnie,” Jiheon says when she looks up from her phone to see Jisun rushing into her room. “What do you think I should caption this post? I’m stuck between – ”

Jisun waves Gyuri’s phone in her face, the Instagram comment screenshot pulled up on it. “Is this some trend that your friends are into these days or something?” she asks. “What do these cat emojis _mean?_ ”

Jiheon raises her eyebrows at her. “I don’t know,” she replies, and then Jisun remembers how generation gap be damned, Jiheon's always been utterly useless when it comes to keeping up with millennial trends. “Maybe he just really likes cats. Have you asked him about it?”

“No,” Jisun frowns, flopping over Jiheon on her bed, to which Jiheon starts whining _unnie, get **off.**_ “Guess I have to now. What were you saying about your post?”

And after advising Jiheon that “ _no,_ using a quote from Game of Thrones to caption your Instagram post would _not_ be a good idea, I don’t care if Saerom let you watch it with her, you’re still five months from being an adult and we don’t need another scandal,” Jisun forgets about the whole Minho Instagram thing _again_ until:

“What about Jisun-ssi?” the radio host asks her a couple days later, after Gyuri’s sent a message to one of her old Produce48 friends through a fit of embarrassment. “Do you have any celebrity friends you want to record a message to?” And just as she’s about to smile apologetically and say no, he continues, “How about your Inkigayo co-host, Stray Kids’ Lee Know?”

 _why are you doing this?_ she sends over DM as soon as she’s in the car back to the dorms. And then Jisun realizes that they just wrapped up a late-night radio recording and it’s nearly three in the morning.

Unexpectedly, he responds within a minute. _Doing what?_

Jisun frowns at that. _saying we’re friends._ Saerom snores softly from the front seat. _commenting on my posts._ There’s more, but Jisun didn’t think the rest of it through before sending that first message. She hits the back of her head against the headrest before trying again. _are you doing this because,_ and then she backspaces. _do you only feel –_ but that’s not quite it either.

 _you don’t have to feel sorry for me,_ is what she finally decides on before locking her phone and shoving it under her thigh, not wanting to know how he’ll respond.

She doesn’t check it again until she’s laying in her bed, still wide awake at four-thirty, her chest full with this stuffy, staticked feeling. _Do you want me to stop?_ stares back at her, sent five minutes after her last message.

And the thing is: Jisun thinks about it. The weird whole dating-but-not history between them, and the scandal that pushed her and her members to the top, and the shallow off-camera conversations they have now that make her want to run the other way anyway. But Jisun _also_ thinks about the relative equilibrium that the rest of the comments under her posts have returned to, time stamped around the time Minho started doing whatever it is he’s been doing, and well. It’s nice not to log in to a bunch of anonymous netizens hating her guts.

She tries to rephrase it about ten times before, she finally responds, honest – _no._

After a beat, Minho starts typing again. Jisun’s eyelids droop as she stares at the three dots, continuing to blip across her screen, until she falls asleep. When she wakes up in the morning, her phone lets her know that in reply, _iknowleeknow’s_ sent her five tabby cats, all walking in a single-file row.

 

 

 

 

The next month and a half passes by like this:

If you enter ‘Stray Kids Lee Know’ into any search engine and click on the first profile you see, you’ll find ‘owns three cats’ and ‘has a 4D personality’ are listed under the usual height and weight and whatever picture from his latest comeback photoshoot the site’s uploaded. “In case they ever ask me about him,” Jisun explains when Jiwon just gives her a withering look after glancing over her shoulder at her phone in the car.

“Why can’t you guys do the normal person thing?” Jiwon asks. When Jisun blinks back at her, she rolls her eyes. “You know. _Talk to each other?_ ”

And surprisingly, they’ve actually been doing more of that now that they’re trying the whole friendship-for-the-cameras thing. Which is how Jisun finds out that for something that any random person could find on the internet, the aforementioned facts are very fundamental pillars to understanding Minho in real life.

“Cute, right?” Minho grins at her, showing her his phone when she’s startled awake from him cooing at it. On the screen, there’s a video of an orange tabby meowing at the camera. “That’s Soonie. My mom sent this over just now.”

“Yeah,” Jisun echoes before covering her yawn with a hand. She doesn’t know how to tell him she’s more of a dog person. “How old is he?” and Minho’s eyes sparkle and his earrings dangle as he goes on to animatedly talk about his cats.

“What’re you watching that’s so funny?” Saerom frowns, scooting so she can rest her chin against Jisun’s shoulder in their M Countdown waiting room. Ever since that first conversation, Minho makes sure to give her bi-weekly updates on his cats via Instagram DM on the grounds that, _None of my members care! Can you believe that?_ and well, Jisun can’t complain because the cats _really are_ cute. “‘Doongie’s excited to see me,’ from iknowleeknow,” Saerom reads loudly. “Wait, you’re messaging your ex again?”

Jisun elbows her. “ _Relax,_ Romsae,” she hisses, smiling innocently at the coordi unnie that turns to look at them. “We’re just friends, okay? He literally just sends me cat videos.” Which is true, especially since he got a few days to go home to Gimpo this week before their Inkigayo recording on Sunday, which is why there’s still ten videos with the “unread message” notification next to them.

“More like, quote-unquote _friends,_ ” Hayoung chimes in. And then Seoyeon, “Yeah, first it’s cat videos, and then before you know it – ” and then she makes kissy noises into Jisun’s ear.

But Jisun’s always thought of her ideal boyfriend like this: tall, nice smile, and not an idol. Which is why she cried so much after her first boyfriend broke up with her, which is why she turned that one idol down when he asked her for a serious relationship, which is why when Minho sends her this gif of a cheering cat captioned _fighting!_ the day fromis_9 is nominated for first place against TXT, Jisun smiles and stares at it for a good few minutes before realizing the crux of her ideal boyfriend ideology is: that tall, non-idol imaginary face is starting to converge with a very-idol, rabbit-toothed grin that she used to press against her own mouth.

But anyway, press play again: fromis_9 wins that day. And they win again the next day, and the next, and the day after that too, on Inkigayo. And Jisun can’t help but cry the first two times, but then she’s laughing at Saerom’s running mascara with Jiheon by the third, chanting along to the fanchants during the encore.

One of the staff calls her over after the Inkigayo ending, after Minho hid his cue cards with the winner’s name on them from her the entire time they were backstage with a teasing grin and mouthed _congratulations!_ to her before heading down the stairs with the rest of the performers to give fromis_9 the stage. “Can we get a picture of you and Lee Know-ssi? For our SNS.” And Minho posts the funny picture – where he’s pretending to eat the trophy and Jisun’s mock-glaring at him – on his Instagram the next day with a few of his own waiting room selfies, captioned with Jisun’s part in the lyrics.

The next weeks blur by – from recordings to variety programs to festival performances to a photoshoot, and every time Jisun’s shaken awake in the van, she opens her eyes to somewhere new. She and Gyuri go through too many cans of red bean soup, a futile attempt to decrease the constant bloating in their faces, and Jiwon does a lot of embarrassing impressions, and Jiheon gets even more behind on her schoolwork. And then they wrap up music show promotions only to start preparing for their next comeback, and Jisun’s starting to actually feel like she’s perpetually half-asleep, just like the Idol Room hosts tease her droopy eyes for.

And okay, pause again here: “ _Sunbaenim._ ” When Jisun looks up, there’s two members of a boy group that she’s definitely shared overlapping promotion cycles with before, but the name escapes her, standing at the door of the waiting room, entirely empty except for her. Maybe everyone went to grab lunch while Jisun accidentally micronapped.

“Sorry to bother you, it’s just – ” the one with silver hair asks. She smiles patiently as he rubs the back of his neck. “We just had our comeback and wanted to give you our CD.”

“Oh.” Jisun glances at the cover as she receives it with both hands. And there it is embossed in the corner: ATEEZ. _Right._ “Thank you,” she nods, “I’ll make sure to listen to it,” because Jisun knows exactly how it's like, making rounds like this. Luckily Saerom always did most of the talking.

“And, um, that’s not all!” he continues. “I, uh.” He kicks his group mate, who’s started snickering into his hand, into the hallway before lowering his voice “I wanted to ask if we could exchange numbers? I,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously again and Jisun notices that his ears have turned bright red, “I’ve been a really big fan of yours and I – I left my number inside! If you want to contact me. Not like you have to! I’m…” Jisun raises her eyebrows at him. “ _I’m going to go._ ” And then he turns and walks out before Jisun can say anything, pausing abruptly at the doorway to bow to her one more time.

“What was that about?” Minho asks, furrowing his eyebrows as he watches them retreat down the hallway. Jisun shrugs as she goes through the photobook. And lo and behold, past all the glossy photos there’s a neon pink sticky note on the last page with the phone number on it. She can’t help but laugh.

“He wanted to give me his number.” She plucks out the note, balls it up, and throws it into the trash. When she turns back to Minho, there’s an unreadable expression on his face. “I wasn’t gonna call him,” she tells him, like it’s something he needs to know, like after the scandal between _them's_ just died down, Jisun’s stupid enough to jump right back in and risk her and her group member’s careers all over again, lesson unlearned.

Minho squints at her. Opens his eyes fully again, blinks, and then squints one more time. “How can you,” he starts. Pauses, looking around to make sure there’s no one nearby to hear what he’ll say next. “How can you just ball up and throw away someone’s sincere feelings like that?”

Jisun snaps fully awake at that. _What the hell?_ “That’s none of your business,” she retorts. Because it’s not like anyone who ever gives her their number, or anyone she gives her number to, feels anything beyond the sensation of when they tangle their tongues together. Because it’s supposed to be fun with nothing else attached and _the problem is –_ “What do you want me to do? Call him and go on a date and get caught in another scandal?”

“That’s not what I meant!” he replies. He takes a step forward, closer to her than the doorway, frowning. Like this – hair black again, expensive bomber over a white t-shirt and jeans – it’s like that day he asked Jisun for her number after that cooking program recording all over again, except he continues, “What I meant is – ”

“Wait,” Jisun interrupts him without thinking. Which is exactly part of the pattern in how she always seems to fuck things up, and at this point, it's just threading in another stitch. “ _Are you interested in me?_ ” And Jisun thinks she's been doing really well at keeping herself out of trouble over these past few months, until:

Minho blinks at her, mouth slightly open, showing his front two rabbit teeth before he counters: “Are you interested in _me?_ ” Which is _so goddamn annoying,_ as per usual –

And that’s all it takes for Jisun to scramble to lock the door from where Minho pushes her against it, and then they’re kissing each other like they’ve been starved of it. She inhales sharply, exhaling only when he opens his mouth to let her lick into it while he tries to pull off his expensive-ass jacket, and after two attempts, he gives up on that and just cups her face in his hands instead. And Jisun’s always liked that about kissing him, liked that he wasn’t super tall for an idol because she was already short, and this way it wasn’t uncomfortable for either of them when they made out like this and then he’s mouthing his way across her jaw when she suddenly remembers her goddamn ideal boyfriend ideology, and Hayoung’s whispered voice telling her:  _DON’T SHIT WHERE YOU EAT._

Like the butt of any one of Jisun’s bad, unfunny jokes, there’s gotta be a punchline, so here it is: she and Minho have come full circle with this, back to the bad idea that started it all.

Except this time, Jisun – slightly the more wiser and smarter – manages to stop herself from sticking her palms under Minho’s shirt like she wants to with a well-timed "Oh _, fuck."_

 

 

 

 

“What’s wrong?” Jiwon asks when she finds Jisun watching late night television on mute instead of sleeping again, some of the make-up she didn’t manage to cry and wipe away with her snot still on from the recording. “Ugh,” she groans after turning Jisun’s face towards her and subsequently pushing it back to look at the TV screen. “You look like a lovesick maiden.”

“No,” Jisun hiccups, wiping her nose with another tissue from the box in her lap. “More like a not-so-innocent idol who messed up and made out with her co-worker slash ex slash I-don’t-even-know-what-he-is-anymore again.”

Jiwon sighs, brushing away the rest of Jisun’s used tissues to sit down beside her. “Well,” she leans into Jisun’s side to cuddle and draws her knees up to her chest. “At least you know this time.”

 

 

 

 

The good thing about having a jam-packed schedule is that Jisun’s so busy that she just doesn’t have time to think about it. ‘It’ being ‘the mistake.’ ‘The mistake’ being ‘sticking her tongue down Minho’s throat again.’ ‘Sticking her tongue down Minho’s throat again’ being, well. Exactly that.

But that doesn’t mean that her mind doesn’t absentmindedly flashback to the memory in the middle of the her day, because it totally does, and then Jisun has to deal with the secondhand embarrassment while struggling through the new dance routine for their comeback.

That also, unfortunately, doesn’t mean that Jisun doesn’t ever have to see Minho again. Because come Sunday morning, Jisun’s back at Inkigayo for recording, pointedly trying to ignore the elephant in the room while getting her makeup touched up. That elephant being a certain Lee Minho, who’s looking straight at her when she glances up in the mirror at her reflection. The coordi unnie’s down to her last pump of concealer and Jisun’s dark circles have only gotten worse.

“Hey,” he says casually after her stylist’s left to grab a new bottle of product from her car, and before Jisun gets the chance to follow her out the door or put any other escape route into play. He chews his bottom lip and then releases it. “Can we talk?”

Jisun looks at the rest of the staff still in the room with them. And thank god for that. “Right now?”

Minho blinks, considering. “Lunch?”

Which is how Jisun ends up sitting in this not-frequently-used stairwell in the back of the SBS building with her co-worker slash ex slash _who really knows anymore?,_ stabbing the lid of her red bean soup with a straw. Minho offers her the sandwich he got from the cafeteria, to which she shakes her head, before he shrugs and deconstructs it so he's eating everything but the bread. The true idol life.

“So – ” Jisun starts at the same time Minho says, “I – ” “You go first,” he tells her, pressing his mouth into a close-lipped smile, and goes back to picking at his egg salad with a plastic spoon.

“So,” Jisun drags out, taking a deep breath. “Last week,” she swirls her straw around the can, “wasn't a good idea.”

Minho nods, puts down the spoon, and looks at her. “Okay,” he acknowledges.

Jisun looks back down into the depths of her red bean soup, through the hole where she poked the straw. Maybe if she squints her eyes hard enough, she can slip through that small crack and avoid this entire conversation. “Because we should've known better.”

He hums in thought. “We should've, and I think we did.” He leans so his back's against the wall and he's facing her. “But we did – ” Minho gestures vaguely, letting out a dry laugh, “ – _whatever we did,_ anyway. So what now?”

Jisun frowns. It's pretty fucking obvious. “Pretend like it never happened?”

Minho stares at her, a beat too long to be casual. “Maybe,” he says lightly. “But can you?”, and then Jisun thinks back to the ideal boyfriend she's always imagined for herself. And instead of tall, with a nice smile, and not an idol, all she sees is someone looking back at her tenderly and completely, looking at her a lot like Minho is now.

“I – ” Jisun starts. She runs a hand through her hair and clears her throat, where she feels her heart beating, threatening to claw its way out and throw itself into Minho's lap, unless she can put the feeling into words. “It’s kinda silly but.” She swallows, staring at her fingers. “I've always had this picture of my ideal boyfriend in my mind.”

Minho hums again, listening. “And he's tall and has a nice smile and he's not an idol.” Jisun stacks her hands on top of each other so her fingers cross over. “So, this,” no, “ – _us._ ” And then she reaches down and tightens her fingers around her red bean soup again. “I've never thought about it before.”

Silence. And then: “Thought,” Minho repeats. Jisun lifts her gaze to look at him. “You said ‘thought.’” And there's the beginning of a tentative smile tugging on his lips, like she's telling him a joke that he already knows the punchline to. “Are you thinking about it now, then?”

It takes a moment for that to sink in. It's so familiar, and a little hopeful-sounding and _so goddamn annoying_ and Jisun doesn't know why she expected less, pressing her mouth closed in an attempt to hide her own smile. “Maybe,” she echoes back at him, feigning nonchalance.

And the grin spreads across Minho's face with that, just like a cat that got the cream.

**Author's Note:**

> huge thank you to **e** , the best mod/cheerleader/beta i could ever ask for ♡ extra thank you for reassuring me every step of the way!, and to **n__n** who held my hand and listened to all my concerns and complaining about this fic with much patience TT, and to **s** who didn't leave me to burn alone and always got me to wordsprint even when i was half-awake! and to my lovely team - **i** for the encouraging words that got me through the end! WE DID IT!!! ♡♡♡
> 
>  
> 
> thank you for reading! again, please do fill out [this survey.](https://forms.gle/uBqToUDtkmoiLGZKA)


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